To some people, eating alone is considered one of the great tragedies of modern life. Eating tends to be a social event, and approaching a restaurant all by your lonesome and requesting a table can be an exercise in courage. What if, however, you didn’t have to eat alone? What if you could eat with gigantic stuffed animals? You can!

Japan’s Moomin Café is based off of the similarly named book and cartoon series. Thus, each table is outfitted with a gigantic, stuffed version of one of the main characters that you can sit with and tell your secrets to. They look sort of like giant hippo-like beasts with wide eyes (insert mother-in-law joke here.)

Reports indicate that if you show up here alone, you automatically get paired with a cotton-stuffed cutie. So, if anyone asks what you did last weekend, you’ll have a ready excuse.